


There But For the Grace of God

by sartiebodyshots



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e02, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4281771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sartiebodyshots/pseuds/sartiebodyshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from 5x02- Ben tells Caitlin that there’s no way to save her brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There But For the Grace of God

            “Caitlin?” Ben says, swallowing hard once Anne is gone.

            “Yeah?” her face lights up.  “Do you have it?  What will fix my brother?” 

            Ben crosses his arms, holding himself tightly.  “We don’t have anything.  He’s too far gone.  He’s too close to being a skitter.”

            “What?” Caitlin asks, frowning and lower lip starting to tremble. 

            Her brother is growling and shaking the confines of his cage.

            “We can’t fix him,” Ben says.  He wants to look away from the girl about to have a breakdown, but it seems too cruel.  He’s delivering her brother’s death sentence to her; the least he can do is look her in the eye.  “And we can’t keep him here.  It’s too dangerous.”

            “We can’t go back out there,” Caitlin says, shaking her head and backing away.  “We’d die before we made it back.”

            “You can stay here.  We can just…”  What’s the way to put it?  “let him rest now.”

            “You want to kill my brother?” Caitlin screams, running towards the cage door.

            Ben darts forward to intercept her, waving away the guards who are now pointing weapons at them. 

            They put them down with clear reluctance. 

            Caitlin yells and thrashes, trying to break free of his hold, but Ben can easily keep her subdued. 

            Ben doesn’t want to hurt her, so he’s careful.  Slowly, they end up on the ground and her thrashing turns into sobbing into Ben’s arms. 

            “He’s all I have left,” Caitlin sobs.  “I need him; he needs me.  We were _fine_ before you and your friends showed up.”

            “I know you don’t have any reason to trust us,” Ben says quietly, so conscious of the guards around them, “but I could have been like him.  If my family hadn’t found me in time, I would be like Brian.  And if I was ever hurting my dad or my brothers…” He swallows hard.  “I’d want them to let me rest.  I’d never want to hurt them.”

            “He doesn’t mean to!” Caitlin says.  “He can’t help himself.”

            “It’s still not right,” Ben says, hesitantly stroking her hair since she’s no longer attacking him.  He wants to comfort her.  “Help your brother.  Let him go.  If he’s a good brother, he wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

            He tries real hard not to think about Hal.  Although, Ben probably deserves it.

            “I can’t do it.  I can’t kill him,” Caitlin starts crying again.  “You can’t ask me to shoot my own brother.”

            Ben looks up at the guards.  “You guys can leave.”

            “We have orders-“

            “Leave your gun.  We’ll be fine,” Ben says with an edge in his voice. 

            They nod and leave, setting the gun down. 

            “I’ve never actually shot anyone,” Caitlin says.

            “I can do it,” Ben says hollowly.  It’s going to make her hate him before she even knows him.  What else is new?

            Caitlin looks up at him.  “You can?”

            “Yeah.  I promise, I’ll be respectful.  Or, as close as possible,” Ben says.  It’s hard to shoot someone respectfully.

            She nods but doesn’t say anything.

            “You shouldn’t watch.  It’s still going to be gruesome,” Ben says.  He slides back and grabs the gun before getting to his feet. 

            Caitlin stands up, too.  She looks sad and defeated.  “He shouldn’t be alone, shot by some stranger.”

            “Okay,” Ben says. 

            Caitlin takes a step towards the cage.  “I’m sorry, Brian.  I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.  I love you, okay?  No matter what.”  She listens to the growling and the rattling, like it means something.  Then, she steps away and nods a little.  “Okay, you can do it.”

            “I’m sorry too, Brian,” Ben says, before gipping the gun with slick hands.

            He opens the cage and looks into the face of what he might have become.  It’s a terrible twisted almost-humanity.  Just close enough that Ben can see the human in how he looks at him.  Far enough away that Ben knows there’s no hope of bringing him back from the other side. 

            For a brief second, Rick flashes in front of Ben’s face.  Rick, who had looked as human as Ben but had been almost as far gone as Brian. 

            His heartbeats _it could have been me_ over and over in these long few seconds.

            Ben takes the shot, one that he’s taken hundreds of times before, right between the eyes.  He tries to do it carefully, to avoid his eyes or mouth.

            Brian lets out a scream and falls to the floor, dead- Ben can’t hear any breathing.

            Caitlin rushes to his side, sobbing as she rocks her brother’s mangled body back and forth. 

            Ben hands the gun to the guard on his way out the door.  “Give them their privacy.  There’s no danger anymore.”

            Both Weaver and Dad are rushing towards him.

            “We heard gunshots!” Dad says.

            “Brian’s dead,” Ben says emotionlessly without looking at either of them as he walks by.  “I did it; he’s gone.”

            There was a time when his dad would have come rushing after him, asking if he’s okay and pointing out all the little things that make what happened to Brian so personal, listing off the differences between him and Brian.  Dad would have hugged him tight, rocked him back and forth, found Ben his favorite food from the haul and brought it to him.  A time when his dad would have comforted him.

            Those days are gone. 

Now, Dad just claps him on the shoulder.  “Good man.”

Ben keeps walking until he finds somewhere far away from everyone else.  He climbs up a broken building, sits with a thud, and stares up at the sky.  Crying doesn’t come easy anymore, so Ben just stares and tries so hard not to think of anything. 


End file.
